Thursday, September 15, 2011

the NYC baby-haters

People in New York love their dogs... love them. They will get up at 5am and take their dogs to a dog park underneath an abandoned roller coaster on the Hudson river and stand around whilst their dog does an electric blue poo... (OK - so maybe that is not every dog owner)

What they don't like is babies. They love dogs more than babies. And this is never more prevalent than when you do a stand up gig for the first time in a comedy club on the mean streets of New York (53rd and 9th to be exact)...

I've been doing stand up gigs in London so when I booked my trip to NY I was like "hey! I should book a stand-up gig!" what better city to do stand-up than the city of Seinfeld?? I booked one, and so I packed my tight nut hugging blue jeans, a blazer with leather elbow pads and white sneakers and I was on my way! All the way to the Broadway Comedy Club.

My gig was on the second day of the trip, so I was hoping the jetlag would have worn off by then, if not it would have been pretty funny watching me mumbling and falling asleep onstage. Luckily it had worn off, but I was still pooing my pants about it.

This was at an actual real comedy club, like they had a framed microphone of Kathy Griffin's in the bar. Historical.. and here I was all the way from England to tell jokes about my loss of bladder control.

Also I was last.

I had two friends come to the gig, and the baby.. (who also counts because she gave feedback throughout the whole night) Comedians are prepared for most things.. heckling, broken microphones, lights shining in your eyes... but no one was prepared for the tiny squawks of that baby.

The thing is - this is one of the best behaved babies in the world... she wasn't screaming, just making baby comments about the jokes she was hearing. But it threw everyone off and throughout the night "who brings a baby to a comedy club" was the gag of the night.. they should be thanking me for bringing the baby, they all got brand new bits out of that!

So finally when it was my turn, a) the microphone breaks and some guy in the first row goes "oooh death on stage" and b) I have to tell everyone that YES! I BROUGHT THE BABY!! what??? that's how you do a gig in London?!! There's no two drink minimum - you bring a baby and go on stage. You would think these New Yorkians would be better prepared for the unexpected.

Oh and when traveling the world and doing ATM humour jokes, make sure that you are in a country where they actually use pin-machine card readers.... otherwise you're just an idiot standing on stage miming pressing buttons and no one knows what you're talking about.

But hey, they laughed at my stupid jokes and I won the free t-shirt at the end (the pity shirt).